Systems Mindset

The first step in gaining mastery over the degree of change in your organisation, is to see your organisation as a system (your meta-perspective). Everything that happens in your organisation arises as a result of actions, interactions and shortcomings of the system.
Even sickness, accidents and competitors are products of the system. This takes a little bit of getting used to. But think of it this way. If we see these things as being outside of the system, we cannot do anything about them, but if we see them as inside the system, we can influence them, even avoid them in some cases, and we can compensate for them.
In other words, the systems mindset is an opportunity. It is a way of thinking that provides new ways of seeing issues and new routes to addressing them. Recognising the system encourages us to understand the causes and the contributing factors, and recognising these enables us to implement sustainable solutions.
Furthermore, when we recognise the system, we can begin to separate it from ourselves, and ourselves from it. We can see the parts we play within it, and can begin to identify systematic alternatives for these. And thus we can begin to work more objectively for the system's improvement.
And as we separate ourselves from the system, we can see change for what it is. We can recognise change as a systematic influence, and monitor more accurately and objectively its impact on what we are trying to do. We can see increases in expectations as a new 'specification' for our system, we can see technological developments as new options to meet that specification, and we can see change as simply the means by which we redesign and refocus our system to fulfil its potential (through the application of process solutions).
It is true that your system model will not explain everything that happens in your organisation, BUT, it will enable your people a far better grasp of those things that can be explained, it will enable you to progressively gain insights into those things that currently cannot, and, perhaps most importantly, it will enable you to master change rather than to be subject to it.

Move on to 'Process Solutions'; Return to 'Systematic approach'